How to Use Social Media Walls at your EventsHow to Use Social Media Walls at your Events

How to Use Social Media Walls at your Events

Your attendees can be your event’s best marketers. However, it can be difficult to get attendees posting about your event — and even harder to get them to tag you if they do. So how do you overcome this issue? Invest in a social media wall. This encourages attendees to share their experience online. Here’s all you need to know to get started.

What is a social media wall?

Put simply, a social media wall is one or more screens at your event that display posts and pics that are tagged with your event’s hashtag on social networks like Twitter. Most social media walls display posts immediately, but if you’re concerned about explicit content, you can moderate which posts are shown or highlight particular tweets.

Social media walls can be found on screens behind or to the sides of a stage, in the lobby as guests enter, or around the venue itself. They’re a great way to display questions for speakers and reactions or highlights from the event as they happen. Plus, they encourage attendees to post so that everyone who’s not at the event knows what they’re missing out on.

How to properly showcase your social media wall

Guests love to see themselves on the big screen, and a social media wall is great encouragement to post in real-time. (Also, the more people who are posting about your event at once, the better your shot at trending.) The only catch? The social media wall will only display posts and pictures tagged with your event’s hashtag — which less than half of attendees usually remember to use when posting at an event.
That means your number one priority should be to have very visible and fun signs around the event that includes your brand’s hashtag (and your social media handles as well). Use a catchy hashtag that’s displayed throughout the event. It will remind attendees to post, and to include your brand if they were already planning on using social media.

Which social media wall platform should you choose?

There are several platforms to help you display tweets about your event in real time. Some are free and some you need to pay for. Keep in mind that each platform has a different visual style for displaying posts. And the more professional the platform, the more likely you will be able to pull posts from multiple social networks, and see engagement analytics after the event.

Here are some of the most popular social media wall vendors:

Tweetwall: One of the first social media walls, Tweetwall gets posts on displays less than a second after they’re posted. They also have numerous moderation and advertising options.

Tagboard: Tagboard is a great tool to use before your event as well, since it helps you collect all social posts about your event.

Hootfeed by Hootsuite: If you already use Hootsuite to manage your social media, it likely makes sense to use their social media wall product, Hootfeed. This displays tweets in real time, and also lets you capture audience questions over Twitter.

Sprinklr: One of the most popular social media wall suppliers, it lets you
aggregate, moderate, and analyze engagement with posts.

Experiment on their websites to see which platform fits your needs. Try entering the hashtag of a different event happening while doing your research, and see if the results look like what you’re envisioning for your event. No matter which platform you choose, social media walls are just one aspect of a full social media event marketing strategy.